China will exert more efforts to crack down on pornography and illegal publications in 2005, aiming to create a favorable cultural environment for its reform and opening up and socialist modernization drive, a senior party official said.

Addressing a tele-conference held in Beijing Friday, Liu Yunshan, head of the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) Central Committee, said in the campaign in 2005, top priority will be given to elimination of illegal publications because these publications pose a serious threat to social stability.

"To create a healthy environment for the young, we should relentlessly crack down on books, cartoons, video-games with contents of violence, porn, and superstitions and close down porn web-sites and sex phone stations," he said.

Liu, also member of the Political Bureau and the Secretariat of CPC Central Committee, said police should step up surveillance over shops around campus, at airports and railway stations, and along commercial streets to clear the selling or distribution of illegal publications.

"The Internet and short messages sent by mobile phones should also be closely examined," he added.

In last July, China launched a nationwide campaign to clean up Internet porn that are supposed to harm the nation's "young minds."

China has seized 229 million copies of illegal publications, closed down 2,966 illegal publishing houses and more than 40,000 stalls and shops that sell illegal publications.

On Saturday, police announced national and regional hotlines to report on cases of illegal publications across the country.

(Xinhua News Agency January 23, 2005)